You can observe for yourself the degradation of the air and water around us. The earth has a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of human i… - Stephen Baxter

Francis Bacon, who died in the seventeenth century, argued strongly that philosophy and theology should be kept separate, and that we should concentrate our studies on the local problems and the interconnections between material and efficient causes. Final-cause analysis was just a distraction: ‘Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.’

Ussher’s intense and obsessive project seems very odd to the eyes of a modern scientist. After all he had deduced the age of the Earth without looking at a scrap of physical evidence—not a single rock.

We'd carve a place out of the wilderness—"
"But there is no wilderness, Mane said. "Even without war, even if you found a space not already cultivated, you would be forced to occupy a region, delineated in space, time, and energy flow, already exploited by another portion of the ecology."
It took some time for Emma to figure that out. "Yes," she said. "There is bound to be some environmental impact. But—"
"Other species would find reduced living space. Diversity would fall. And so it would go on. Soon the world would be covered from pole to pole by humans, fighting over the diminishing resources.